Brussel Sprouts

I wrote a really long post yesterday but for some reason I opted not to post it.  I have spent the past two days in a row off which feels pretty strange these days.

Yesterday I went to our local open market and bought some vegetables.  It is one of those markets where everything is packaged to look like it was pick out of someones back yard. Our needs these days to capture some long lost connection to the good old days while we take pictures of the vegetable and post them on the Internet.

I looked at some lettuce that actually looked fluffed and picture perfect and cost $6.00.  I don't have the budget for fluffed lettuce so I purchased some beets, cauliflower and brussel sprouts.

My mother would be so happy with the cruciferous  vegetables. They are called cruciferous because they have little crosses at the cut part of the stem.  I like strong vegetables mostly because we had to eat whatever was put on the table except the meat. We could leave the table if we ate all our vegetables so we learned to like all vegetables. My parents were ahead of their time.

I don't remember ever seeing a fresh beets or even a canned ones for that matter. We ate a lot of cabbage in our house and I can remember my mother giving me the core to munch on until dinner was ready.  I could never understand peoples hatred for brussel sprouts. I thought they are just baby cabbage but then I had them boiled and it was clear why.

I never met a vegetable I didn't like so I had to come up with a better method for cooking them.

First I think all fresh vegetables are better with a little color on them so I cut them in half, tossed them with olive oil and put them cut side down in a hot cast iron skillet or griddle. Just leave them there until they get brown.  It works like a charm and if not just toss them in butter at the end.

While I was cooking and cleaning today was thinking about my past holidays the ones that were really memorable.  I have to go way back for those perfect memories from my childhood the ones that I have played over and over in mind until every detail was perfect. The truth is those memories are a child's memory. The truth is my mother was already sick and we were just surviving.

Our past are as good or as bad as we choose to remember them. It is our picture to paint and we can choose to see what was good or choose to see what was bad. It is only a memory.